Legal Business

Clifford Chance’s New York office loses corporate duo to Greenberg Traurig

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Strategic recruitment Clifford ChanceGreenberg Traurig
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Clifford Chance’s (CC) ambition to build its New York office have suffered a setback with the loss of M&A duo Ivan Presant and Joseph Cosentino to US firm Greenberg Traurig.

Greenberg, has had a particularly busy first half-year for hires and new office launches, and this latest addition will see its New York partner headcount increase to 30 corporate partners.

Both Presant and Cosentino joined the Magic Circle firm in January 2012 from Dewey & LeBoeuf. The move will see Presant return to the firm he left in 2008 for Dewey, having been a partner there since 2004. He originally joined having been an associate at both Sullivan & Cromwell and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Cosentino became a partner at the now defunct Dewey in 2009 having been there as an associate from 2000.

Presant said: ‘Having now practiced elsewhere, and gained considerable experience in my practice, with clients and in other legal environments, I now see that today’s Greenberg Traurig is the place that will best support the kind of growth I envision personally and professionally in these times.’

Both Cosentino and Presant have worked on a range of corporate work with Cosentino having particular experience in TMT, pharmaceutical, insurance, and energy and utilities sectors.

The hires in New York follow the addition of real estate teams from both Allen & Overy and Norton Rose Fulbright in Warsaw last month with 12 new lawyers joining in a serious bid to grow and integrate its real estate network outside the US.

This came after the firm also launched a new office in Tokyo with a three-partner team from DLA Piper and White & Case at the beginning of the year.

CC voted through changes to its remuneration system last month, to use a more flexible lockstep by stretching the top of its ladder in a bid to retain star partners. The changes will mean leading partners can be moved from 100 points up to either 115 or 130 points while other partners may be brought down from the 100-point plateau to 70 points.

jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Dealwatch: White & Case, CC and Debevoise among raft of firms on SPIE’s €700m revived float

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Corporate Allen & OveryClifford ChanceDebevoise & PlimptonWhite & Case
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White & Case capital markets duo Thomas Le Vert and Philippe Herbelin, alongside corporate partner François Leloup, have resurrected the listing of electrical engineering group SPIE after an eight-month postponement.

The Euronext Paris Stock Exchange initial public offering sees White & Case’s client issue €700m worth of new shares and sell 6.3 million of existing shares owned by management. Trading is expected to begin on 12 June.

Clifford Chance was instructed by SPIE’s consortium of owners, private equity houses Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and Ardian, as well as the state-backed investment fund of Québec, with a team comprising Gilles Lebreton, Alexandre Lagarrigue, Thibaut Cambuzat, Katia Gruzdova, Stéphanie Giuliani and Marion Finzi.

Meanwhile, Mayer Brown’s Paris-based corporate and securities partner Jean-François Louit is advising SPIE’s management, which own a minority stake in the company. Allen & Overy is representing the underwriters on the deal.

Longstanding adviser Debevoise & Plimpton also secured a senior role on the deal, advising SPIE on the €1.53bn worth of new senior loans. The seven-lawyer Debevoise team was headed up by London-based partners Alan Davies and Raman Bet-Mansour, who executed a €2.16bn refinancing of SPIE’s debt earlier this year, with City partner Matthew Saronson providing tax advice. Latham & Watkins has been instructed by the banks.

Debevoise has advised SPIE since handling the Clayton, Dubilier & Rice-led consortium’s €2.1bn acquisition of SPIE in 2011 from PAI Partners.

Founded 115 years ago to engineer parts of the Paris Metro, SPIE’s revenue climbed by 15% to €5.22bn last year, boosted by a string of acquisitions and international growth.

tom.moore@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Clifford Chance votes through changes to lockstep in bid to retain heavyweights

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Financial management Clifford Chance
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City giant’s remuneration review comes after recent key departures

In a move considered overdue by some, Clifford Chance (CC) voted through proposed changes to its remuneration system in late April, creating a more flexible lockstep by stretching the top of the ladder in a bid to retain star partners.

The firm traditionally operated a lockstep system with a single profit pool, where partners spent three years as juniors before progressing on to the equity ladder, which ranges between 40 and 100 points. Under the changes voted through, leading partners can be moved from 100 points up to either 115 or 130, while others may be brought down from the 100-point plateau to 70 points. While billed by management as a fairly comprehensive review intended to look at performance across all geographies, it remains unclear which criteria will be used to determine how partners will move up or down the ladder.

Legal Business

A $5.7bn settlement: Bank quintet admit market manipulation guilt

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Litigation Clifford ChanceGibson, Dunn & Crutcher
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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) yesterday afternoon announced that five major banks have made a collective settlement of $5.7bn (£3.6bn) to bring a close to investigations which have seen a raft of firms pick-up work including Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Clifford Chance.

Bringing the investigations to a close yesterday was the DoJ’s announcement that four financial institutions, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, The Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays, all pleaded guilty to felony antitrust violations, and agreed to pay criminal fines totalling more than $2.5bn – the largest set of antitrust fines ever obtained in the US. The fifth, Swiss bank UBS which is represented by Gibson Dunn, will plead guilty to rigging benchmark interest rates and will pay $545m.

The quintent plus Bank of America also reached a $1.8bn settlement with the Federal Reserve Board regarding its investigations while there were also settlements with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the New York State Department of Financial Services.

Represented by Clifford Chance during the investigations, Barclays was fined the most and agreed to pay a combined total of £1.5bn. The fines imposed are covered by existing provisions of £2bn, including those taken by Barclays in its Q1 2015 results. It was further announced by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) that it has imposed a £284m fine on Barclays for ‘failing to control business practices in its foreign exchange business in London’, constituting one of the largest financial penalties ever imposed by the FCA or its predecessor the Financial Services Authority.

Mandates that have so far arisen in the UK regarding Forex probes include for Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Stephenson Harwood and Travers Smith. Freshfields is advising Deutsche Bank while Stephenson Harwood litigation partners Tony Woodcock and Sara George are representing individuals working for financial institutions in connection with the scandals.

Travers, meanwhile, was appointed in March 2014 to review the Bank of England’s conduct in the affair, with Lord Grabiner QC appointed by the bank’s oversight committee to run an independent assessment of its actions.

It follows the settlement made by other banks with the FCA in November for failure to stop traders from foreign exchange market rigging, in which HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, and US banks JP Morgan Chase and Citibank, were all collectively fined.

However, the settlement is likely not to be the end of the saga with the conclusion of illegal activity now potentially generating forex-related claims in the UK that are predicted to significantly outweigh those relating to Libor-rigging.

Simon Hart, RPC banking litigation partner, said: ‘[The] settlement is likely to spark yet further civil litigation against the banks, particularly from pension funds and other money managers that have suffered losses on Forex trades as a result of the market manipulation.’

‘Legally it will be much easier to bring a civil claim against a bank for Forex manipulation than for Libor manipulation. The short term and one-off nature of Forex trades means it will be far easier for firms to prove that they lost money on particular trades during a period one of these banks was manipulating the market. If a firm aggregates all those trades where losses were suffered, the numbers could well be significant.’

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Dealwatch: Linklaters and CC act on New Look sale as South African billionaire Wiese continues UK high street buy-up

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Dealwatch Clifford ChanceLinklaters
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Less than 30 days after advising on the £1.3bn purchase of Virgin Active by South African billionaire Christo Wiese’s private equity vehicle Brait, Linklaters‘ rising star Alex Woodward has led on Brait’s £780m deal for a 90% stake in clothing retailer New Look.

Wiese, who made his money from South African retail giant Pepkor, has added New Look to a string of recent investments in the UK high street, which include a stake in Iceland. The deal sees private equity houses Apax Partners and Permira sell-up after 11 years of owning the outfit, and will pass on around £1bn of debt, giving New Look a total enterprise value of £1.9bn.

Clifford Chance corporate partners Amy Mahon and David Pearson, who advised Permira on its €250m purchase of Norwegian drug maker Pharmaq in 2013, advised Apax Partners and Permira.

Partner Danny Blum led a team at Eversheds which advised New Look on employee share plans. Blum said: ‘This was a rollercoaster of a deal which was complicated by the wide employee ownership structure in place at New Look and the speed at which the transaction took place.’

Brait said in a statement that, with New Look already operating more than 800 stores around the globe and holding the second largest market share in the UK womenswear, there are ‘strong growth prospects in France, Germany, Poland and especially China which is a priority market’.

Woodward worked alongside fellow private equity partners Stuart Boyd and Stuart Bedford, who also heads the firm’s London corporate team, in executing the deal. The Magic Circle firm is building a strong relationship with Brait as it focuses its investment on the UK market, having also advised the company on its purchase of feminine hygiene brand Lil-Lets in 2013.

The remaining 10% of New Look will be owned by the family of Tom Singh, who founded the business in 1969, and other senior management. UK corporate boutique Macfarlanes advised the Singh family led by corporate M&A partner Harry Coghill, while Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson advised the management.

tom.moore@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Keeping the talent: Clifford Chance votes through changes to lockstep in bid to stem flow of star partners

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Financial management Clifford Chance
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The partnership at Clifford Chance (CC) has voted through proposed changes to its remuneration system which will see the firm deploy a more flexible lockstep by stretching the top of the ladder in a bid to retain star partners.

The firm, which currently operates a lockstep system with a single profit pool, sees partners spend three years as juniors before progressing onto the equity, which ranges between 40 and 100 points. Under the changes voted through, it is understood that leading partners could be moved from 100 points up to either 115 or 130 points while other partners may be brought down from the 100-point plateau to 70 points. While described as a fairly comprehensive review intended to look at performance across all geographies, it remains unclear what criteria will be used to decide how partners will move up or down the ladder.

In January a spokesperson confirmed the firm had kicked off a review of the system – a move taken as part of managing partner Matthew Layton’s election manifesto in 2013 – at management level and the proposals finally went to a partnership vote in late April, receiving approval last Wednesday (29 April).

Internally the move towards a more meritocratic system is viewed as a welcome change with CC being historically slow at implementing structural reform and losing many of its best performers to US firms scaling up in Europe – including most recently global private equity co-head Oliver Felsenstein to Latham & Watkins.

Previous attempts made by the firm to shake up the structure of its pay model include during former chief David Childs’ second term when senior management discussed moving to a single tier partnership and losing non-equity partner status – a proposal which ultimately failed to gain support.

This latest mandate for increased flexibility coincides with managing partner Matthew Layton’s introduction of fresh key performance indicators for partners and associates in January, with aspirations to increase US and Asia revenues to approximately 20% and 25% respectively over five years, with the measures brought in to ensure greater revenue growth and profitability.

The proposals are, however, generating grumbling from some of the partnership, notably its German operations which underwent a strategic review in recent months that has already seen the departure of eight partners.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

White & Case makes ‘strategic step’ in Middle East push with CC’s regional capital markets head

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Strategic recruitment Clifford ChanceWhite & Case
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White & Case has hired Clifford Chance’s (CC) Middle East head of capital markets and structured finance, Debashis Dey, as a partner in its Dubai office.

Having been a partner at the Magic Circle firm for over 18 years, Dey comes recommended by The Legal 500 as a ‘key contact’ in CC’s tier one-ranked Islamic finance practice. Major mandates include advising the joint lead managers on Turkey’s $1bn Sukuk issuance on the Irish stock exchange in Janurary and advising Standard Chartered Bank on property developer Aldar’s $750m Sukuk which was also listed in Ireland.

Rob Mathews, White & Case’s EMEA regional head for capital markets, said: ‘We continue to see the Middle East emerging as a financial centre and Islamic finance becoming an increasingly significant option within the capital markets arena. The arrival of Debashis is a strategic step in expanding our capital markets practice in the region and meeting the needs of our clients.’

Margaret Cole, office executive partner for the UAE, added: ‘The arrival of Debashis – a top tier advisor – is an important step in further strengthening our finance capabilities in the Middle East. He is an excellent fit with our existing capabilities across the region.’

Other firms making a push in the Middle East of late includes DLA Piper which this month announced the opening of a second office in Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah to be run by legal director Rakesh Bassi, who joined the firm last year from CC; while those retrenching includes Latham & Watkins which in March told staff in Abu Dhabi and Doha that their offices will close by the end of the year with the firm using Dubai and Riyadh to service the region.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Clifford Chance German practice suffers further partner exits

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Germany Clifford Chance
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Magic Circle firm Clifford Chance (CC) has seen multiple partner exits from its German operations in recent weeks with longstanding capital markets partner Markus Pfüller and trademark head Thorsten Vormann becoming the latest, leaving for SZA Schilling, Zutt & Anschütz and K&L Gates respectively.

Reasons suggested for the exodus, which has already seen at least nine lawyers leave including eight partners, point towards a long-term cultural and strategic divide between CC and the German firm it merged with in 2000, Pünder, Volhard, Weber & Axster. One partner at the firm says: ‘The majority of partners came from the 2000 merger with Pünder. There was a difference in culture and since the merger, things improved day-to-day but not on the general standing of what kind of clients we want to advise and where they come from. That has never been solved or overcome.’

Legal Business

Global promotions increase at Clifford Chance as it makes up six in the City

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Partnership promotions Clifford Chance
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Clifford Chance has this year made up 25 lawyers to partner in its annual promotions round, with six associates across corporate, finance, and real estate practices making the cut in London.

The global promotions were made across corporate (nine new partners), finance (six), capital markets (five), disputes (four), and real estate (one) across offices including London, Paris, New York, Washington DC, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Amsterdam, Madrid, Bucharest, Hong Kong and Singapore.

It marks an increase on last year’s global promotions round of 21, although seven of those were promoted in London.

Five of the new partners this year are female.

The firm said the promotions ‘demonstrate the firm’s continued commitment to invest in building and maintaining practices that address the most critical and complex challenges faced by its clients, and which reflect fast-evolving market demands.’

The promotions will take effect from 1 May 2015 and bring the total number of partners in the firm to 581.

Managing partner Matthew Layton said: ‘Many of our new partners are already well recognised as key individuals in their fields. They have impressive track records on high-profile and ground-breaking mandates and play-leading roles in helping those clients grappling with the implications of the increasingly complex global business and financial environment.’

It follows yesterday’s (28 April) announcement from Linklaters, which promoted 23 lawyers to partner of which nearly 40% were corporate lawyers, while Norton Rose Fulbright announced a total of 51 promotions in what constitutes its largest round since its 2013 combination.

Partnership promotions in full:

Corporate

Mark Jan Arends – Amsterdam

Lee Askenazi – New York

Gareth Camp – London

Timothy Cornell – Washington, D.C.

Mathias Elspass – Düsseldorf

Dieter Paemen – Brussels

Graham Phillips – London

Jörg Rhiel – Frankfurt

Christian Vogel – Düsseldorf

 

Finance

Benjamin de Blegiers – Paris

Paul Carrington – London

Matthew Dunn – London

Richard Tomlinson – Paris

Hein Tonnaer – Amsterdam

Rodrigo Uría – Madrid

 

Capital Markets

Clare Burgess – London

Angela Chan – Hong Kong

Per Chilstrom – New York

Madalina Rachieru – Bucharest

Jurgen van der Meer – Amsterdam

 

Litigation

Thibaud d’Alès – Paris

Megan Gordon – Washington, D.C.

Edward Johnson – Hong Kong

 

International arbitration

Kabir Singh – Singapore

 

Real estate

Angela Kearns – London

Sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk

Legal Business

Mounting departures: CC sees further German exits as capital markets partner leaves for SZA Schilling

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Strategic recruitment Clifford ChanceSZA Schilling, Zutt & Anschütz
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Clifford Chance (CC) has this week seen another exit from its German operations with longstanding capital markets partner Markus Pfüller leaving for the Frankfurt office of local firm SZA Schilling Zutt & Anschutz.

Set to join the firm in May, Pfüller will be joined by counsel Philipp von Ploetz. Pfüller specialises in advising domestic and foreign clients on capital increases, securities offerings, stock exchange listings, take-overs and securities trading.

Recommended by The Legal 500, Pfüller became partner at the firm in 1999. He was part of the debt capital markets team that advised IVG Immobilien AG on its preparations for launching a listed Real Estate Investment Trust and assisted Volkswagen with issuing a $2.15bn bond targeting US institutional investors.

Commenting on the hire, SZA Schilling co-chief executive Jochem Reichert said: ‘With his long experience in the fields of capital markets and his outstanding expertise Markus Pfüller is the ideal complement to our corporate practice. We believe in growing the capital markets business in Germany and with [the hire of] Markus Pfüller are perfectly prepared for that.’

Pfüller’s exit mirrors that of multiple departures from CC’s German operations in recent months following a strategic review carried out in December by German head Peter Dieners that expected to see up to nine partners leave. Other recent moves includes trademark head Thorsten Vormann to K&L Gates, capital markets partner Wolfgang Richter to CMS Hasche Sigle, energy partners Peter Rosin and Thomas Burmeister to White & Case, German corporate head Arndt Stengel to Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy, and most notably CC’s co-private equity head Oliver Felsenstein to Latham & Watkins.

sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk